Among the set of systems of an aircraft, there is generally at least one monitoring system making it possible to monitor the operation of the other systems and to detect any malfunction thereof.
When no malfunction of the monitored system is detected, the monitoring system assigns that system the normal operating state.
When a malfunction of the monitored system is detected, the monitoring system assigns that system the faulty operating state.
In the latter case, the monitoring system can notify the pilot of the detected malfunction in particular by generating a corresponding alert. Certain monitoring systems further make it possible to the pilot a predetermined procedure for reconfiguring one or several systems to offset this malfunction and return it to a “safe” situation in terms of flight safety.
This is in particular the case for a monitoring system known as “Flight Warning System (FWS), which is onboard most current aircraft.
Systems of the FWS type in particular make it possible to monitor the majority of the systems of the aircraft.
With the increased complexity of systems, the number of the functions that may appear simultaneously in the systems is growing considerably. Furthermore, a malfunction in a given system may cause multiple malfunctions in systems depending on it.
Information regarding the malfunction of one or more systems may next be processed appropriately as for example proposed in EP 2,860,601 A1. In particular, this document proposes analyzing the influence of such a malfunction on the capacities or operational tasks of the aircraft.
In general, the monitoring systems of the FWS type are faced with the need to manage the communication of multiple alerts to the pilot.
There are currently alert priority mechanisms implemented in monitoring systems of the FWS type. These mechanisms in particular make it possible to assign a priority to each of the alerts and to communicate these alerts to the pilot based on their priority.
However, the management of the communication of these alerts to the pilot by the monitoring systems of the FWS type is not completely satisfactory. In particular, when a large number, for example tens, of malfunctions occur simultaneously, the existing priority mechanisms do not make it possible to process the corresponding alerts efficiently. Thus, these alerts are communicated to the pilot practically simultaneously, which does not allow the pilot to process them in a satisfactory manner to guarantee the safety of the flight.